Earlier this year Moose Travel Network out of Toronto ceased operations and left a number of travellers “out in the cold” so to say.

I wasn’t surprised, but at the same time felt a bit guilty I hadn’t posted a warning about them years ago. You see they still owe me $2,000 from when I worked for them many years ago.

 

It was sad to see they hadn’t cleaned up their act, but knowing that the “Moose East” operations are now out of business and no more travellers will be harmed by sketchy business operations, brings a bit of closure. Doubly sad is that there is a big void for the service that Moose Travel tried to provide – affordable backpacking trips in Eastern Canada. They could have done it so much better and been a very successful company.

For anyone curious to know more on my background working with Moose Travel, here is a blog post from 2016 that I never got around to publishing when they were still in operation. At the time I didn’t want to give them any publicity, as small as this little blog may be.

The life of freelancers…

The travel industry is not known as one of the highest paying industries, but it sure can be a ton of fun if you work with the right businesses.

Making money as a travel writer and travel marketing consultant can be challenging. You may be offered amazing trips around the world, in lieu of pay, for creating an entire marketing plan. Or perhaps an online outlet wants to pay you $25 for a travel article that will take you 4 hours to write. Depending on your current situation, sometimes you have to accept those opportunities.

Thankfully, if you stick with it, you can find permanent contracts, or clients that happily pay your reasonable professional fee of $90/hour because they know you produce results.

 

Working for Moose Travel, back in 2012 and 2013…

Not too many years ago, I was a tour guide and tour driver with Moose Travel Network in Canada. For an entire season I enjoyed showing visitors to Canada the best of Ontario and Quebec. I had intended to continue working with them the next season even though it was a job that paid next to nothing. How come? Because it was an active, fun outdoor job and the only way I was able to afford to pay my bills each month was because they also hired to do some marketing and social media work for them.

 

Things went smoothly for a number of months, then they decided to reduce the monthly pay on the marketing and social media side of things. Alright, no worries. You get what you pay for, so I reduced the marketing content appropriately.

Problems with Moose Travel

Then, as the summer went on and I was enjoying being a tour guide, Moose Travel started to skip payments on the social media and marketing efforts. I had to chase them to get late payments. Very annoying, I still had plenty of bills to pay and was now on the road for weeks at a time, making it difficult to secure other paying freelance gigs.

By the end of the season, once tours were finished and there were no more travellers to drive around, they still owed me a chunk of money for that consulting side of things. I chased them every week or so, and they had a long list of excuses for not paying. It became a source of stress since the tour guiding season was over.

Here I am, a solo freelancer, trying to survive, and another small business doesn’t care if they pay me.

 

I thought only big corporations did that kind of crap. But I wasn’t going to cause a huge issue about it, as they were saying they would pay me, and I was still doing my monthly marketing and social media efforts for them as I sought out new job opportunities.

Moose Travel Didn’t Like Paying Others Either

I remember having a good chat with Ben Teskey, the then-owner of the Wolf Den Hostel in Algonquin Park. I had brought a Moose Travel group there towards the end of the season and everyone was having a great time playing cards or sitting around the campfire. It had become practice for Moose Travel to give their guides a pre-paid credit card before each tour, to pay for certain hotels, fuel and food.

Ben was always strict in making sure everything was fully paid up right away – before we could go to our rooms and before giving the groups a run down of the hostel facilities, he lined everyone up to pay. He told me he had previously invoiced Moose Travel for their groups, but it had become a huge pain and he didn’t get paid for months and months. It got to the point where he had to call them up and tell them if they didn’t pay upfront they couldn’t stay any more.

 

Smart guy! He wasn’t the only person I talked to that had the same story about issues collecting payments. I’ve learned to adopt similar practices now when I have new clients, since you never know which company might screw you over!

At least I knew that it wasn’t just me who Moose Travel was treating with a complete lack of respect when it came to paying their clients and suppliers. I didn’t make me feel any better, but I learned not to take it personally, it had just become a poor business practice that they seemed to think was acceptable.

Week by week, month by month, the stress grew as Moose Travel Network continued to miss their own self-imposed payment deadlines. “We’ll get the money to you next week” was the kind of thing I would frequently hear. Heading in to the new year, I was still chasing them for payment, with their overdue amount creeping up to $3000.

 

For someone like me who didn’t have a “real” job at the time, but still had a mortgage to pay, that is a big chunk of money.

Partial Payments, Cancelled Payments, More Excuses

So, the next season I had changed my mind and had no intention of returning as a driver and guide. But I had every intention of collecting that money I was owed. I continued to send overdue payment emails and spoke to Moose Travel owner Megan Lalancette on the phone multiple times. Every time I got a verbal or email promise that payment would be made soon.

Realizing that these marketing services were seen as disposable by Moose, but that their tour guides were an integral part of their business, I figured the only way I may get the marketing/consulting side of things paid was to return as a guide for the next season. By being a guide, I had something of value again – the ability to actually run their tours! So I signed on, and sure enough after all those many months of no payments, I received a partial payment of the overdue marketing funds from the year before.

 

Shortly after this, better paying, less-stressful work opportunities came along, so I had to resign from being a Driver and Guide for Moose Travel. It was such a relief! I had collected about 1/2 of the marketing services money they owed me up to that point.

Moose Travel Goes Silent

After resigning from the driving and guiding duties, Moose Travel kept me on to continue to do some social media work for them each month. I was optimistic that the payments would continue to come through as they had while I was guiding the previous month, but I was wrong.

Payments stopped coming through again, so I knew it was time to cut things loose. They had hired a new marketing person, but had kept me on doing social postings. I knew that person would eventually take things over, so I advised Moose Travel that I’d be terminating my consulting services that June, and their final amount owing was $2000. I was even so kind as to keep some scheduled content running for them into July and August, free of charge.

Over the next couple of months many emails were exchanged. I tried to elevate things by saying I may have to go to a collection agency or let other people know about this situation. But payment was never received. Here are a few direct quotes from emails I received from the owner of Moose Travel, Megan Lalancette:

“I will send partial payment today to clear the outstanding balance.”

“Sorry, I have been away. I will get a payment out to you tomorrow.”

“Happy New Year to you as well. The season is just starting to pick up so we should be able to send something shortly. Again, thanks for your patience.”

“I will send you $500 today to start to pay this balance down.”

Notice one of those said “Happy New Year”? Ya, it dragged on into the next year. So, needless to say the amount still owing was $2000.

Now, in support of Moose Travel, they did send a wire-transfer payment of $500 as the last quote above mentions. But I was travelling and didn’t see the email right away. When I did see it (3 days after receiving it), there was also a “cancelled payment” message. The accountant at Moose Travel apparently got worried they sent payment to the wrong email, and cancelled it just 48 hours after sending.

 

They didn’t bother to contact me to verify it was the right email, they simply cancelled it. I haven’t received a payment since then, despite confirming that it was the correct email. Who cancels a wire transfer after 48 hours, especially when you’ve sent transfers to that exact same email in the past?

As for those promised payment emails and phone calls, well my emails to info@moosetravel.com and megan@moosetravel.com never get replied to, and I left phone messages on their answering machine to no avail. After assuming I was put on some kind of blacklist by Moose Travel, I finally got in touch with Megan from Moose Travel one last time, almost three years later (January 2016) and it seemed payment was on the way! I even agreed to accept $1700 instead of the $2000 they owe me – if they paid it right away. Even that effort to get things settled didn’t work, as Megan went silent again.

Moose Travel’s Stall Tactics Worked…

From 2012 to 2016. Weeks became months, months became years, and now I had the paperwork ready to file off a lawsuit against Moose Travel. Sadly, I didn’t know what the typical statue of limitations was on such issues and of course had waited too long. I suspect now that was part of the plan on the Moose Travel end with their constant delay tactics. On the bright side, I did become more familiar with the process to take next time, in case someone else tries to skip out on payments to Red Hunt Travel.

I had a fun time going everywhere from Ottawa and Montreal to Halifax and Charlottetown with Moose Travel, thanks to the cool people who took the trips. It really was a shame I could never promote their trips in good conscience as there was always this lingering lack of trust behind the scenes.

 

I’m sure almost everyone else I know would have spammed them on social media and reported them to the BBB and posted plenty of negative reviews about them. That really isn’t my approach, but should Moose Travel ever be reincarnated and start up again, I’d be very wary of giving them any money. Unfortunately there aren’t really any other great alternatives out there that I can recommend.

Have you dealt with any clients or companies who refused to pay? Have you had a poor experience with Moose Travel in recent years too? If so, let us all know so other people won’t make the same mistake trying to work with them!

One small side note, The owners of Moose Travel in western Canada were different, with the two company’s being totally different behind the scenes. While I haven’t worked with them, it may still be alright to travel with Moose in BC and Alberta.